Christmas at Blue Moon Ranch

by Lynnette Kent

  The expression on Willa’s face when Daniel parked his truck near her horse barn a few minutes later proved him right. The line between her arched eyebrows, the downward tilt of those wide, soft lips, plainly said he wasn’t welcome.

  Nate ignored the message. He moseyed over to where she stood by the gate to a corral. “’Afternoon, Miss Willa. We came to look at some horses.”

  She glanced at Daniel, who was following Nate, then looked at the other man again. “You’re helping him buy horses?”

  “I’m his new foreman. We’re getting his operation set up, and I figured you’d have a mount he could depend on.”

  If anything, her frown deepened. “You’re working as foreman on the New Moon Ranch?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Nate’s attention had gone to the horses standing quietly inside the corral. “I like the look of that buckskin, there.”

  But Willa wouldn’t be diverted. “You worked on the Blue Moon for twenty years, Nate.”

  His dark gaze swung back to hers. “Yes, ma’am, I did. Then Mr. Mercado, may he rest in peace, fired me. I’m sure you remember that.” When Willa started to speak, Nate raised a hand. “Now, I ain’t harboring hard feelings. What’s past is past. I heard Major Trent, here, needed some help. I was getting tired of listening to myself think and thought I might as well be doing something useful. So tell me about the buckskin. How’s he go?”

  Willa blew out a deep breath. “He’s hot,” she said, exaggerating only a little. “Needs an experienced rider.”

  “Okay, how ’bout the black-and-white pinto gelding on the rail? I like the look in his eyes.”

  She did, too. She’d been thinking about keeping him for herself, since her favorite horse, Montezuma, was turning twenty-two next year. He couldn’t keep working forever, and the pinto would make a dependable cow pony.

  But selling meant one less horse to feed this winter. The price would easily cover the wages she’d paid out on the weekend. “He might be a good choice,” she conceded, avoiding Daniel’s blue eyes. “Real smart, easy gaits, no tricks. I like him.”

  Nate nodded. “Let’s put a saddle on him.”

  She called Robbie, who brought a saddle and bridle out of the barn. Nate tacked up the pinto without fuss, then pulled himself easily onto the horse’s back and proceeded to put him through his paces.

  “He’s good,” Daniel commented, coming up beside Willa as she propped her arms on the fence.

  “Nate spent years on the rodeo circuit.” She didn’t look at him, but she could feel his size, his warmth next to her. “He can ride anything with legs.”

  “I tried to tell him you wouldn’t want to sell a horse to me.”

  Willa risked a glance at his face and found that grin waiting for her. She fought the urge to smile back and won, barely. “As long as you take care of him, I don’t have a problem selling you the horse.”

  “Nice mover,” Nate said, pulling up beside her at the fence. He swung his leg over the saddlehorn and slid to the ground. “Major Trent, have a go.”

  Willa, watching closely, saw Daniel swallow hard. “Sure,” he said, leaning his cane against the fence post. “What’s his name?”

  “Calypso,” she stuttered. “We call him Cal.”

  Inside the fence, Daniel circled to Cal’s left side and put a hand on the gelding’s neck. “Hey, there, Calypso. How’s it going?”

  “We’ll take him out in the middle.” Nate headed the horse away from the fence. “Give you more room to mount.”

  “Yeah, right.” The soft comment came from Robbie, who’d joined Willa at the fence. “You might as well call the ambulance now, Mom. This won’t be pretty.”

  “Hush.” Her urge to defend Daniel surprised her. “He’s ridden before.”

  “Cal will take care of him,” Susannah said from Willa’s other side. “He’s a good horse.”

  Toby squeezed in between Willa and Robbie but didn’t say a word as Daniel took the reins in one hand and put the other hand on the back of the saddle.

  “We’ve got a mounting block,” Willa called. “We can bring it out…”

  Daniel gave a single shake of his head. His knuckles tightened at the rim of the saddle, and his shoulders lifted on a deep breath. He bent his left knee.

  Toby said, “That’s not how—”

  Daniel gave an awkward jump, which somehow landed him on his stomach in the saddle, with both legs dangling on the horse’s left side. As they watched, he fumbled for the stirrup with his left foot. Willa caught her breath—Cal wasn’t used to this kind of mounting technique. Would he stand still?

  Nate had hold of the bridle and reins, but Calypso sidled several steps under Daniel’s weight. Willa didn’t know whether to offer help or simply watch disaster unfold.

  “Mom…” Susannah gripped her arm. “He’s going to fall.”

  “I told you,” Robbie said.

  But then Daniel’s boot slipped into the stirrup. Using the extra support, he straightened his arms, as in a push-up, over the horse’s back. With Calypso fidgeting underneath him, he swung his stiff right leg from the hip—up, up and over the horse’s hindquarters. Finally, he lowered his seat carefully onto the saddle.

  Willa thought her knees might collapse in relief. Daniel leaned forward and patted Calypso on the side of the neck. “Good boy,” he said. “We’re going to get along fine.”

  Nate spent a minute adjusting the right stirrup to accommodate Daniel’s stiff leg, then stepped back with his hands on his hips. “Take him for a spin.”

  Daniel grinned. “Not literally, I hope.” First at a walk, then a jog and a lope, he rode Calypso around the corral—not always in balance, not completely in control, but Cal’s good manners made up for what his rider lacked in technique.

  Robbie turned away from the fence. “It’ll happen,” he predicted. “Hope somebody’s there to pick up the pieces. Come on, Suze. We gotta finish cleaning the stalls.”

  “I’m coming.” Susannah started to follow but looked back just as Willa glanced her way. There was no mistaking the stars in the girl’s eyes. She’d contracted a serious case of hero worship.

  Terrific, Willa thought. That makes two of them.

  Daniel dismounted with more speed and less effort than he’d needed to get on and led the horse back to Willa without Nate’s help. “I think Cal and I can work together.” He rubbed the pinto’s nose. “I guess we’ll be buying a horse trailer sometime this week and we’ll pick up Calypso then, if that works for you.”

  “Sure.” Watching him walk away with Nate, she thought she saw the toll his ride had taken in the way he leaned on the cane. How would he manage the daily grind of ranch work, if a few minutes in the saddle took such effort?

  “He’s really strong,” Toby said in an awed voice. “Trick riders do stuff like that.”

  “Sometimes.” The silver truck disappeared toward the main road in a cloud of dust. For the first time since Daniel arrived, Willa felt like she could breathe easily.

  Toby followed her toward the barn. “I’ve ridden Cal. I could help him.”

  “Nate works for Major Trent, Toby. He doesn’t need our help.”

  “But—”

  “You’ve got your own chores to do here, plus homework. When do you have time to help anybody else?”

  She reached the barn door, only to realize that Toby had stopped quite a distance behind her. “Are you coming?” she asked. “I want to check the fence line in the south pasture. We can take Patches and Monty out for an afternoon run.”

  He shook his head. “I have homework.” Turning on his heel, her son stalked in the direction of the house, leaving Willa with no doubt of what he thought about her reasons for being a bad neighbor.

  And the really sad thing, she thought as she saddled her horse, is that he’s absolutely right.

  SHORTLY AFTER SUNRISE on Tuesday, Daniel had just nailed up a new board to replace one of the broken pieces in the corral when he heard the sound of hoofbeats coming up the road. He
straightened his back, groaning a little, to see Rob Mercado approach on his tall black horse, with Calypso jogging close behind.

  “Good morning.” Daniel lifted a hand in greeting. “You didn’t have to deliver Cal—we would have come to get him.”

  “My mom told me to bring him up here.” Rob held out Cal’s lead rope, and Daniel limped over to take the horse. Looking around, the boy shook his head. “You sure got a lot of work to do.”

  “That’s right,” Nate said, coming out of the barn. “And we could use some strong young muscles like yours to help us. What do you say? Want to earn some extra cash?”

  Rob’s eyes brightened at the word cash, but then his face fell. “I’ve got school. Besides, you’re hiring some hands, aren’t you?”

  “Won’t start till next week. The corrals as they stand ain’t safe enough for this nice horse.” He took Calypso’s lead rope from Daniel. “Major Trent and me can get it done, but the job’d go faster with some extra hands.”

  Daniel kept quiet—he figured any effort he made at persuasion would only drive the boy away. After considering for a minute, Rob nodded. “I guess I could come for a couple of hours after school. But I have to get my chores at home done, too. I can’t stay late.” He threw Daniel a defiant glance.

  “No problem.” Daniel shrugged. “An hour or two will be a big help. Thanks for bringing the horse.”

  Rob cleared his throat. “You’re welcome.” Once back in the saddle, he gave a brief wave. “See you later.” With a movement of his heels, the black horse leapt into a ground-shaking gallop, which gradually faded away.

  “He’s a good boy,” Nate said. “I hear he’s had a hard time since his daddy was killed.”

  “I think they all have.” Daniel lowered himself to sit on a bale of straw. “Losing a father…a husband…isn’t something you get over quickly.”

  “Jamie Mercado was a decent man. Not the steadiest, maybe…” The foreman shrugged.

  Daniel knew Willa would hate being the subject of gossip. But maybe Nate could help him understand her better. “Not steady, how?”

  “He liked speculating—invested in some crazy projects over the years. Willa only found out about a couple of them after he died and the money wasn’t there for paying the bills.”

  “Hmm.” So Willa’s husband had left her in debt. Yet she felt she owed it to him to keep the ranch together and felt guilty for selling part of it. If she couldn’t trust her own husband, how would she ever trust a stranger? “So, do we have a place to park Calypso until I can get these boards nailed up?”

  “I’ll tie him up with some hay for the time being.” Nate accepted the change of subject with a nod. “He’ll be good till we’re done.”

  True to his word, Rob arrived about three-thirty each afternoon for the rest of the week and worked hard for two solid hours without protest or complaint. Daniel didn’t ask if Willa had objected to the arrangement and the boy didn’t volunteer any information.

  The three of them didn’t really talk much at all. Daniel needed most of his strength for the work itself and to force his body to cooperate. He took as few breaks as possible, especially while Rob was present, and went to bed dead-tired at night.

  Thursday, though, Rob looked over at him while they waited for Nate to cut a board for the side of the barn. “You went to Iraq, like my dad.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Did you fight in many battles?”

  “I saw my share.”

  “What’s it like?”

  Daniel debated his answer for a moment. “Loud. Hot. Dirty and confusing. Scary.”

  Rob curled his lip. “You were scared?”

  “I don’t know anybody who wasn’t. You look death in the face, then follow orders, anyway. That’s a soldier’s job.”

  The boy nodded. “I guess so. What kind of stuff did you do?”

  “Well…” Daniel sifted through his memories, trying to find some that were G-rated. “We helped build two schools and a hospital. I did some mentoring for Iraqi kids, coached soccer for a couple of teams—”

  Rob dismissed those efforts with a snort. “Did you hunt down terrorists?”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “Did you kill any of them?”

  “When I had to.” Too often.

  “How many? Did you get medals and stuff?” The boy’s eyes glowed with excitement. He raised his arms as if he held a rifle and mimicked the sound of weapon fire, jerking the imaginary gun with each shot. “Pow. Pow, pow, pow. Pow.”

  Daniel sliced his straight arm down across the boy’s hands. “War is a terrible experience, Rob. Don’t ever take it lightly.”

  They were still staring at each other when Nate came back with the board. Daniel excused himself from the nailing process and returned to the house, where he sat for a long time in the dark, thinking about all the buddies he’d lost to war. Including one he’d never met…Jamie Mercado.

  By sundown on Friday, the corrals and the cattle pens were in good shape—clean, repaired and functional. Daniel handed Rob a crisp fifty-dollar bill. “I appreciate the effort. Anytime you want to come around, we’ll have work for you.”

  Rob’s eyes went round in his dirty, sweat-streaked face. “Wow…thanks!”

  “Thank you.” Daniel swiped at his forehead with his shirt sleeve—the October weather in south Texas resembled his memories of summer in Ohio. “Have you got time for one more quick chore?”

  Still staring at the fifty, the boy said, “Sure.”

  Daniel led the way into the house, where three moving boxes still sat in the living room. “Would you help me move these into the bedroom?”

  Rob squatted beside a box as if to lift it on his own, but couldn’t get it off the floor. “Man, that’s heavy. What’s in there?”

  “Army gear,” Daniel said, carefully casual. “Boots, uniforms, junk I carried around with me. I’ll get the other side.”

  Despite Daniel’s aching back, the two of them moved the three containers into a corner of the bedroom. Each time they set down a box, the clank of metal hinted at the true nature of the contents. Daniel ignored the sounds, and Rob didn’t ask for an explanation.

  At the front door, Daniel handed the boy an extra ten dollars. “Thanks again, Rob. Can you ride your pony home in the dark?”

  Without meeting his eyes, Rob shrugged one shoulder. “Sure.”

  He called Willa a little while later just to check. “And I wanted to thank you for letting him help out. Nate and I are grateful.”

  “Rob made the choice,” she said stiffly. “He had to work after dinner all week to get his chores here done, and then stay up late with his homework.”

  “He must have big plans for the money,” Daniel joked. “What’s he got his eye on—a new video game?”

  Willa didn’t say anything for a long time. “He wanted to share it with Susannah and Toby for lunch money. He heard me talking to Lili and Rosa about the bills and decided I can’t afford to buy his school lunch.”

  Then she cut the connection without another word.

  Chapter Six

  After practicing with Calypso in one of the corrals all week, Daniel welcomed Nate’s suggestion for a Saturday ride across the pasture land of the New Moon. A portable mounting block made getting into the saddle much less of a chore, and they set out midmorning armed with a map, a sack of sandwiches and a thermos of coffee.

  They came across the first break in the fence about an hour later. Nate hopped off his sorrel pony, Daze, and went to inspect the wire.

  “Cut.” Stepping outside the ranch boundary, he examined the ground beyond the fence. “Hoofprints.” He frowned in disgust. “ATV tracks. Damn rustlers.”

  “Rustlers?” Daniel sat up straight. “In the twenty-first century?”

  “Bet your beef on it.” Nate came back to his horse. “There’s a good market over in Mexico for beef, with no questions asked about the brand or the source.”

  “So somebody’s been rustling Mercado ca
ttle, is that what you’re saying?”

  “Yep.”

  Daniel registered the sense of a big empty space where his guts used to be. Not only did he have to learn the ranching business from the ground up, but he had to deal with cattle thieves, too? Was he really up to the challenge? “Does Willa know about this?”

  Nate shrugged one shoulder. “I expect she does. Come to think of it, I heard the sheriff mention something about rustlers out this way a few weeks ago. Miss Willa would’ve reported the theft, wouldn’t she?”

  “That would make sense.” Daniel stifled his first impulse, which was to ride—what was the expression…hell for leather?—back to the Blue Moon and confront Willa about the rustling immediately. “Do you think this is the only break in the fence?”

  In the course of the day, they discovered two more points where the wire had been cut, plus four places where the line had been dragged down by the cattle themselves. They made note of the locations, so the hands could ride out on Monday and start making repairs.

  “We’ll get this taken care of before the cattle arrive,” Nate assured him. “Looks like the pasture and the water holes are in good shape otherwise. That rainstorm we had coupla weeks ago really did some good for the grass.”

  “Glad to hear it.” Daniel avoided thinking about the storm, and the night with Willa, as much as possible. Fortunately, he worked so hard most days that he fell into bed too exhausted even to dream…well, except for those early mornings when he awoke sweating and stiff with desire, and the fragrance of Willa’s hair was as real to him as the sheet clenched in his fists.

  Back at the barn in the late afternoon, he helped Nate settle the horses for the night, said goodbye to his foreman until Monday morning and gave himself the luxury of a long, hot shower. Then, cleaned up but no less furious than he had been at eleven that morning, he drove his truck down to the Mercado house and stopped in the drive.

  Rosa greeted him at the front door. “Why, Major Trent, what a pleasure to see you! Please, come in.” She led the way into the main parlor, with its high ceiling, gold-framed paintings and more of the dark wood furniture with leather upholstery that he’d seen in the dining room.